Syriana - travels on the slick road

However much sense this made, as a PR campaign it failed to secure for the governments of the Western Allied block anywhere near the necessary popular support to go to war. Within weeks, the word 'oil' was dropped from any official briefing regarding the escalating crisis. If the politicians couldn't get the required mandate by playing to the purse-strings, the heart-strings would have to do the trick. The poor Kuwaiti people on one side, facing off against the barbarity of the Iraqis and their deranged figurehead Saddam (as close a name to Satan you could possibly wish for). We, the humanitarian crusaders (there's that word again), parachuting into to save the day and our democratic friends from the clutches of totalitarian slavery. In a switch as close to Orwellian newspeak as you could get away with, this was suddenly not a war about oil, and it had never been a war about oil.

Syriana plays like a well-made documentary. Skipping from Washington to Switzerland to Beirut and the bleached out deserts of the Persian Gulf, it's a film that steers as far as possible from the simple cinematic pursuit of entertaining the viewer. The audience stands as if in a busy international hotel corridor, catching glimpses of the insides of the rooms as the characters walk in and out of each other's spheres of influence. It's confusing, but intriguing enough to remain engaged in trying to make it all make sense.

  Stephen Gagham, script-writer for Traffic and here debuting as a director also, has had the courage to stand up to the linear Hollywood dogmas of 'just tell the story', again opting in favour of a sprawling aerial view narrative of a complex socio-political minefield. And tackling another drug at that.

Stripping the oil-trade down to its bare bones, the movie relishes in revealing the framework upon which the business of war-mongering grafts itself, and the people who feast on it. On this battlefield, the wager, the spoils, the booty, all those things that make warfare so lucrative, come in the form of liquid gold. The type which, as it were, oils all the appropriate cogs.

Everyone here is trying to earn their meal-ticket, scrambling for a slice of a soon-to-be dwindling resource. From Congress all the way down to the migrant workers in the oil-fields, oil is the lifeblood. It's the house and vineyard, or it's the chance to see your family fed. Freedom fighters and CIA-agents. Terrorists and law-firms. Emirs and barons. Each and everyone up to their elbows in the sludge.

The movie refuses to patronize its audience by spicing up the story with this or that conspiracy theory. Rather, the film offers the viewer a range of unfolding events and leaves you to connect the dots yourself. The web that appears stretches across borders and social strata, and we are all caught in it as in an intricate tug-of-war. When a knot is tweaked one side of the globe, thousands of miles away the rack for hundreds of others is tightened a few notches. This isn't, however, an exercise in chaos theory, but rather a carefully maintained maximization of profit and power.

The fact that the main image for the poster is the face of George Clooney's CIA operative Bob, but that Clooney received the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor, is another indicator of the general feel of the movie. The players in Syriana are pretty unrecognizable as real people. Characterization is kept to a minimum. Where the film does stray into the personal lives of the characters, it feels a little redundant, getting away from the point. Bob meets his son to chew the cud and chat about school and Mom. It's a token nod towards personalizing him that we could do without. The same with the relationship problems of Economic Analyst Bryan, or the playboy antics of Prince Meshal of Syriana. They're mere specks of colour against the global stage of international intrigue, and as such add little to the connections that Syriana drives on. Even Clooney's piling on the pounds and growing a Grizzly Adams beard seems to be a ploy to take the focus away from his star appeal, as if this is an unwelcome distraction. The result is an ensemble of understated performances, which allow no room for star vanity from anyone in the cast.

The real leading lady of the film remains the queen bee they all work buzz around. This drug of the industrial age, that which we are prepared to send people to die for, will, either in the shape of a new Cold War or of a new Ice Age, define the global human condition in the decades to come.

Syriana goes some way to getting us to think about its impact on the human race. And what the true political depth is behind the simple everyday luxury of driving your car to work.

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